Talk:Sega Saturn

Citing Sources
I'm a bit confused on this for this wiki. It seems things are a lot more lax here than on Wikipedia when it comes to this. I have sources for this article, but I don't want the article to look like a "Sentence.[1][2][3] Sentence.[3][5] Sentence.[2][4][5]" etc. like some Wikipedia articles look (It seems sloppy to me). I've seen some articles on Wikipedia that do this differently, they just list the sources citied at the bottom of the article sans the links to them throughout the article. This is the method I would rather use if it is required that I do cite sources. Nuxius 07:43, 14 January 2008 (UTC)


 * US$0.02: There are many different levels of intensity in scholarship/journalism, and yes, Wikipedia's is higher than the Doom Wiki's.   :>     The point of the bibliography is not to show which idea came from which source, but to acknowledge that we didn't do all the work ourselves, and to allow a reader (if they have time and are interested) to look at the original material and draw their own conclusions.


 * You only have to cite sources you actually used. Whatever you saw yourself during playtesting (or in an editor) can just be added in without annotation.


 * Wikipedia articles are formatted inconsistently because they only decided within the last year or two to use inline citations. It will take a while to change every article.    Ryan W 04:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that cleared it up quite a bit for me. I should be good to go then, since I only had to look for info for the Japanese version, and I got most of that from Kikko, whose videos I have already linked to in the article. Nuxius 09:54, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Auto-import today
Er, I should have mentioned that I was copying content from doom.wikia.com. :P    Ryan W 21:15, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Formatting of soundtrack area
You may note I have yet to approve the last two revisions to this article, and that's because the formatting of the soundtrack section is inconsistent with other articles on this wiki, and difficult to maintain or alter, and in fact I question if this info should actually be in its own article to begin with (similar to PlayStation Doom music). Would like to invite input from the editor as well as others. --Quasar (talk) 17:20, 12 April 2015 (UTC)


 * NB - this was resolved by splitting the content to Saturn Doom music. --Quasar (talk) 11:46, 2 July 2015 (CDT)

Translucent window textures missing claim
Random skipping through this long play of the Saturn version, I can clearly see a semi-translucent BFALL at 2.55.50. Also I can clearly see mid textures with see through parts throughout the video. Is the claim that the Saturn version is missing translucent window textures accurate or referring to something else?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v66_c1PUM98


 * I was told this by Samuel Villarreal (Kaiser), and assumed it was true based on his expert status on the console versions. I'll look further into it. --Quasar (talk) 10:35, 22 July 2015 (CDT)

Another anomaly in the article is that the changes section seems to imply that the players reactions aren't reduced when the games frame rate is low, but the problems section seems to imply it is. Again from the above video, I can see the players reaction time doesn't appear slowed down when the game world is.


 * The port is well-known to have framerate issues, and response time always goes down with framerate drops. I don't see anything in the changes section that supports your claim. Please quote the exact text you find problematic. --Quasar (talk) 09:14, 23 July 2015 (CDT)

I was referring to these two parts of the article:

"...and the player can attack faster, especially during bouts of in-game slowdown."

"...This affects the game's controls, as the marine's reaction time is lessened when the game is slower (it will take longer for a controller command to register)."

Improvements 20150723
I eliminated some very old misinformation about the Saturn console. Although it did still have hardware that was there for the purpose of making 2D graphics friendly, it was supposed to be quite capable of 3D, at peak putting out 50k more polys per frame than the PSX. The problem was actually getting it to DO this, given the programming difficulties and the extreme differences between it and then-prevailing architectures.

I also added the information from the programmer that was published in Retro Gamer magazine issue 134. One statement I have added here (about the reason the hardware rendering couldn't be utilized) is marked with Template:Fact right now because it is referring to an explanation offered by John Carmack on Twitter, which is for some reason not visible on his feed. I am able to access this twitter post at home, but not from here because I do not have the doomwiki twitter account's login credentials with me. I will correct this missing citation later. --Quasar (talk) 10:23, 23 July 2015 (CDT)

Beta version
Similar to the PS1 and 32X ports, should the article include any info about the beta version(s)? One example is how the sound effects were reverted to the PC ones. The beta is a legitimate one and contains some interesting differences. There's a video on youtube showing a bit of it. I myself have another beta of it, dated a bit later than the one on youtube (have the youtube one also).


 * Yes we are interested in that kind of information, though if it is extensive beyond the scope of a section, we would put it in its own article and only reference that from here in passing, as with Doom 32X Development (which does not follow naming conventions currently). Ideally we would have more substantive references to use than a youtube video however, as those have a bad habit of disappearing at random and leaving no trace. --Quasar (talk) 09:38, 8 October 2015 (CDT)


 * Alright, cool. As far as more substantive references, I could, uhhh, show the betas to you or anyone other regulator. Prototypes and betas, especially of console games, are a highly secretive and undocumented beast. Especially when there isn't much community interest. Apart from a few screenshots or videos that, as you said, can be taken down anytime, the only other reliable source is the files themselves.


 * If you have or can make screenshots (from an emulator, or even of the old-fashioned photography of the TV style, barring anything superior) then I'd be interested in hosting them here. If they come from other sources, I'd need to look at them to verify if fair use applies (watermarks, magazine text overlapping, or anything that would make them qualify as an "artwork" beyond a mere photo of the game would exclude them, in general). --Quasar (talk) 14:47, 8 October 2015 (CDT)